1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of storing information on optical media, and more particularly to a system and method for embedding optical drive compatibility information in optical media.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems often generate relatively large quantities of information for storage, particularly in the use of multimedia applications, such as applications that generate or store picture, video or audio information. Although hard disc drive storage capacity has increased over the past several years to satisfy the permanent storage needs of many information handling system users, portable magnetic disc storage capacity has remained largely stagnant. As a result, information handling system users are increasingly turning to optical storage media as a more practical solution for storing information in a portable manner. Optical storage media generally stores information by modification of optical material with a laser and reads information by illuminating the optical material with the laser and measuring the laser light reflected from the optical material. Optical storage media come in a variety of forms including compact discs (CD) that use infrared lasers for storing and reading information, digital versatile discs (DVD) that use red lasers and Blu-Ray discs (BD) that use blue lasers for storing and reading information. As the wavelength of the laser decreases in size, the optical media is generally capable of storing greater quantities of information.
One difficulty with the use of optical media is that a wide variety of materials and designs are often used to manufacture optical media so that optical disc drives will often write information with varying quality to different optical media, depending upon the types of material and design used in the optical media. In order to compensate for the various materials and designs of optical media, optical disc manufacturers typically test each type of optical media as it becomes available in order to develop write strategies to use in writing information to each optical media. The write strategies vary the parameters used to write information with the laser, such as the power setting for the laser, in order to obtain desired accuracy for writing information. The write strategies are typically stored in optical disc drive firmware by association with a unique identification code for each type of optical media. The unique identification code is embedded in the optical media using a standardized format so that the optical disc drive is able to read the identification code from an inserted optical medium and set the write parameters for the write strategy associated with the identification code that is stored in the firmware. Although the use of embedded information allows an optical drive to dynamically adjust write strategies based on media characteristics, after an optical drive is deployed to an end user the optical drive will not recognize newly issued identification codes for optical media released after manufacture of the drive. Although some optical drive manufacturers offer updated identification tables and write strategies, such as for download through the Internet, users rarely if ever update optical drive firmware and often are unaware of the availability or desirability of such firmware updates. In some instances, attempting to write information from an optical disc drive to an optical medium without proper identification and proper use of a current write strategy results in physical and even catastrophic damage to the optical drive, such as optical pickup unit damage or laser bum-out. Alternatively, information written to an unrecognized optical medium is sometimes not retrievable. Similarly, in rare cases optical drives have been shown to be incompatible with certain media designs relative to their read or servo operations. When such circumstances arise, the optical disc drive or optical media manufacturer generally attempts to warn users of the risk or undertakes an expensive recall of the optical media.